


o, death, where is your sting?

by infiniteandsmall



Series: a shore, a tide (no clock, no end, transmit: transcend!) [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Big Gay Love Story, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Introspection, M/M, banter AND overwrought emotion!, jokes AND dramatics!, just a little, listened to a lot of joanna newsom while writing this so that's the feel, past viktor/chris, raised catholic!viktor, sub!viktor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9379565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteandsmall/pseuds/infiniteandsmall
Summary: The last day that Viktor will spend coaching Yuuri in the dim quiet of Hatsetsu Ice Castle, Viktor kneels in front of his future husband to lace his skates. His knees ache, but they have since he was twenty-five, and with Yuuri’s smile sweet as Belgian chocolate he barely notices the pain in his joints.-tell me why is the pain of birth/lighter borne than the pain of death?(aka the story of viktor figuring out how to cope with his retirement and yuuri's impending retirement featuring old friends, new friends, beaches, rivers, and one very important and personally meaningful competition)





	

**Author's Note:**

> A FEW THINGS!!:  
> I JUST LOVE MY SILVER BLADE BOYS  
> title from 1 Corinthians 15:55 because i love to rub my grubby gay hands all over catholicism. also i typed "string" instead of "sting" like 5 times. quote in fic summary from "divers" by joanna newsom because I listened to divers on repeat while writing this.  
> viktor anytime Chris suggests something: sounds gay, i'm in!  
> i ascribe to the headcanon that viktor and chris were both too subby to work out long term. yuuri made viktor believe that doms are real again.  
> viktor "sub" nikiforov and katsuki the dom??? talk about soulmates!  
> betaed by mel [phylocalist](phylocalist) THANK YOU MEL!!!  
> edit: realistically viktor would probably russian orthodox!! i can count on one hand the number of times ive been to russian orthodox services so i did feel comfortable writing what it feels like to be russian orthodox and i am catholic so i am at ease writing abt that experience just an fyi!!

The last day that Viktor will spend coaching Yuuri in the dim quiet of Hatsetsu Ice Castle, Viktor kneels in front of his future husband to lace his skates. His knees ache, but they have since he was twenty-five, and with Yuuri’s smile sweet as Belgian chocolate he barely notices the pain in his joints. The hush of Hatsetsu always reminds Viktor of pictures of bees in flowers and frogs in leaves, which he collects via constant content downloading and screenshotting until he runs out of space on his phone. He brushes a kiss against the blades of Yuuri’s skates before sliding the blade guards on, and then sits back on his heels to look up at Yuuri. He knows that Yuuri likes him here, would’ve known by the pleased smile that plays in the corners of Yuuri’s mouth, even if Yuuri had never stammered out a confession one day about how good Viktor looked on his knees. And if he hadn’t known before, he would’ve known now, because Yuuri manhandles him to his feet and presses him against the wall. They make out like teenagers, messy and enthusiastic, Viktor sandwiched into a line of lockers. With Viktor in his thin-soled dress shoes and Yuuri in his skates, they are almost the same height. And with Viktor weak at the knees, Yuuri pinning his wrists to the wall, breathless and thoroughly kissed, Yuuri looks slightly down on him. It makes Viktor’s stomach flip.

Yuuri steps back, smirks and bites his lip.

God, Viktor loves him.

“The most wonderful,” Yuuri says, tenderly and fondly, with his eyes curling so softly into a smile that Viktor can almost forget that Yuuri literally looks like sex personified when his lips get kissed-pink like this. “My free skate feels really good,” Yuuri says. “Let me show you.”

Viktor waggles his eyebrows, and Yuuri bats him on the shoulder. 

“C’mon,  _ coach _ .” Yuuri says. “Where’s your rigor? Don’t keep me waiting!” 

“Oh, I would never,” Viktor says, and lets Yuuri lead him by the hand towards the rink.

 

This year’s Grand Prix Final is in Marseilles. Chris ropes them into coming several days early with the extremely Chris reasoning of “we have to go out with a bang, right?”

“My one rule is no public nudity,” Yuuri says in reply.

“I think that’s a yes, Chris!” Viktor shouts into his phone.

After one ill-conceived attempt at going out clubbing, they wake up to find themselves in a pile like some sort of twelve-armed octopus in Chris’s bed, with truly hellish hangovers.

Yuuri, in his great wisdom, switches the itinerary to a few hours of sightseeing followed by very relaxing evenings in at the hotel, drinking lots and lots of red wine and ordering a lot of fruit from room service and listening to Beyonce and gossiping late into the night. It’s also entirely possible that Yuuri just enjoys seeing Viktor and Chris in semi-compromising positions in close proximity to a bed.

“Aww, Yuuri sees something he likes!” Chris says after wrestling his phone out of Viktor’s hand and pinning Viktor firmly by his wrists against the mattress.

Yuuri’s blushing, his hands pressed against the lower half of his face. Viktor lets out a little breathy  _ ah  _ and arches his hips up against Chris, because he’s a tease.

“Don’t be gay, Viktor,” Chris says.

“You’re gay,” Viktor mutters, pretending to struggle in Chris’s grip. “Ah! Got it!”

“Hey!” Chris says as Viktor scrambles over to Yuuri’s side with his phone clutching in his hand, cackling.

 

It’s good that Yuuri has a chance to relax and unwind before the Grand Prix Final. By the day of the short program, he is calm and settled. Even interviews barely rattle him. He walks hand in hand with Viktor rinkside after he is stretched and ready to take the ice for warmup. Yuuri puts quiet music on his earbuds, gives small close-mouthed smiles to cameras and sportscasters as he makes his way to the rink entrance.

It’s good to watch Yuuri while he warms up, an experience Viktor had missed last Grand Prix Final because he had been out on the ice warming up, too. When Viktor was young, he would’ve thought it sad that his future self was content to simply watch from the sidelines. But when Viktor was young, the next ten years stretched so long and so full of practices and interviews and competitions that introspection was akin to riding a motorcycle through a dense forest with closed eyes. Now, he misses the feeling of standing behind the curtains, warming up like he was setting a stage, but he watches a small confident smile play on Yuuri’s face as he prepares for a quad loop, watches the smile spread after he lands it, clean and beautiful.

He hasn’t done a quad in six months. His PT threatened him with the possibility of hip surgery before the age of 32, Yuuri threatened to call Mari, who is the most sensible person alive and also fantastic at guilt tripping. But his body still knows where the quad loop lives, and when Viktor sees Yuuri launch himself off the ice, his muscles tense in the shape of the jump.

Yuuri grins as he skates his way towards Viktor. “That felt really good,” he says, like he’s confessing a secret.

“It looked really good,” Viktor says, offering him his water bottle.

They stand together for a minute, watching the other skaters. Yurio sets his face into a serious snarl as he attempts a quad toe flip: he’d shot up since last year and still had not regained the balletic grace his 10-cm-shorter self had possessed. He over-rotates and touches a finger to the ice, which draws a howl from him.

Viktor remembers the rage after his own growth spurt all too well, the mental exhaustion of relearning what had become natural as walking.

It’s odd to see Yurio tower over Otabek Altin as they pass each other, odder still to see them not exchange the thin-lipped but undeniably genuine smiles that had been constant this time last year.

Yuuri sets his jaw as he looks out over the ice, like he’s seeing it empty. Viktor can see him mentally running through his short program in the flicker of his eyelashes. Viktor wraps his arms around Yuuri’s waist, and Yuuri tangles his fingers in Viktor’s.

Finally, Yuuri nods, pressing his lips together. “Okay,” he says. “I think I’m ready. Pass me my jacket?”

 

“Good luck, Katsudon,” Yurio mumbles as they settle in to watch Chris’s short program. He’s slouching in his seat, earbuds in, flanked by Yakov and Lilia. He doesn’t make a playful taunt about Yuuri repeating the previous two year’s silver medal performances. This sets Viktor on edge, but he can see Yurio locked up in growing pains. For so long Viktor couldn’t see in other people the shapes of hurt that matched the ones he’d experienced in his own body. He fights the urge to fix: he knows he can’t fix Yurio any more than he could fix Yuuri, or himself, but he knows that if he teases Yurio, Yurio will get red in the face and insult him and then sit back tremendously satisfied. So he says, “Yurio, you’re so old that I feel like I don’t even have to cover your eyes during Chris’s routines anymore!”

“Where’d you dig this one up, Katsuki?” Yurio says, jerking a thumb towards Viktor. “Because he’s a dinosaur.” He smirks and leans back in his seat.

“He dug him,” Yakov says, “out of  _ my rink. _ ”

“Yeah, but you like Yuuri better than me,” Viktor says, which Yakov acknowledges as true with a tilt of his head.

Lilia, being the essence of poise, does not roll her eyes, but she has a very specific expression, usually reserved specially for Viktor, that may as well be.

They clap as Chris’s program comes to its usual explosive end.

“That was good,” Yuuri says. He bumps his thigh against Viktor’s, draws in a deep breath.

“Very,” Viktor agrees, hooking Yuuri’s ankle with his own.

“Otabek’s up next,” Yuuri says, squinting towards the ice.

Yurio lets out a strangled sound from behind them.

“I forgot…um, it,” Yurio says, scrambling up from his seat and bolting.

“Where the hell is that boy going?” Yakov says, getting up to stalk after him. Lilia follows, and maybe that expression is not solely reserved for Viktor.

“Damn,” Viktor says. “That’s odd.” Yurio always makes a point to wish Otabek luck before he skates:  _ davai  _ answered with a blank-faced thumbs up. The two of them had, most definitely, been in cahoots anytime they had been together for the past two years. Viktor doesn't say that lightly, considering that Otabek is the quietest kid he’s ever seen. When Viktor had been Otabek’s age, he and Chris had been doing things in every gay bar in Europe that probably made the walls blush.

“What?” Yuuri says.

“Yurio’s avoiding Otabek,” Viktor hisses.

“Honey,” Yuuri says, tilting his head back and giving him a knowing look. “You know how Yurio called me pig almost exclusively for about the first year I knew him?”

“He still calls you pig,” Viktor says.

“Yeah, and now every time he does I ruffle his hair,” Yuuri points out.

“That’s true,” Viktor says.

“My point is,” Yuuri says, “is that he made me think he hated me and wanted to shove me in a ditch because he couldn’t figure out what to do about the fact that he didn’t hate me, didn’t want to shove me in a ditch, and at one point had a poster of me hanging up in his room.”

Viktor will love Yurio’s grandpa forever for supplying them with that information. “He doesn’t treat Otabek like he hates him,” Viktor says.

“No,” Yuuri says. “He’s always treated him like a friend. That, he knows what to do with when it comes to Otabek.”

“Wait…” Viktor says. He follows Otabek’s step sequence. It’s good, smooth and fast. “Do you really think so?”

“I mean, we all know that Yurio’s the most mysterious, subtle person alive,” Yuuri says dryly.

“Wow!” Viktor says.

“Don’t be an ass to him about it,” Yuuri says, low and warning.

“Who, me?” Viktor says. Yurio hates the thought of being an emotional open book so much that Viktor’s not even sure he’s realized that he is one. Viktor doesn’t want to shatter the poor kid’s illusions.

 

Viktor presses a kiss to Yuuri’s ring. Yuuri’s hands are warmer than Viktor’s, as they always are. Viktor runs cold, he has since he was a child. He used to imagine his body gave off a chill like that of the ice of the rink.

Yuuri doesn’t need to tell Viktor to watch him and never look away, as he used to. He looks into Viktor’s eyes and smiles. Yuuri’s smiles were smiles that Viktor never knew existed until they flitted across Yuuri’s face, a million words caught in twist of Yuuri’s mouth.

This one’s made of sweet jam, the way Yuuri wags his finger when he gets bossy, the surety of skating on home ice, national anthems and Yuuri’s hand gentle and curving around Viktor’s cheek.

Yuuri pulls their joined hands to his chest, resting them against his heart before he skates away to take up his starting pose.

A winged thing posed to take flight: the mesh skating up the sides of his costume gives him an almost-hourglass figure, the blue iridescence and the overlapping sequins on his back and chest suggest scales. He looks like a creature out of a fantasy.

The music begins, and until the music stops, he is.

_ “I am a dragon, and I’ve been flying for a long time, seeking something I might never find,” Yuuri says, etching the story with which he will make sense of Viktor’s choreography. “But I do find it, and when I do, I realize that my story is not ending. Just beginning.” _

_ Viktor smiles and takes him by the waist, spinning him round, Yuuri grinning, giddy. _

“You’re astonishing,” Viktor says, offering a hand as Yuuri steps off the ice. Yuuri’s chest heaves and his eyes glow. Viktor had thought, in the weeks leading up to this, that he would maybe be jealous of the firecracker feeling of gasping into the end of a program. Now he knows that there’s no room: his chest taken up by a firecracker feeling of its own.

“Astonishing choreography,” Yuuri says, cheeky, but Viktor can tell that he accepts the compliment by the bob of his head and the pleased curve of his mouth.

They sit in the kiss-and-cry, Yuuri clutching Viktor’s hand, shoulders hunched with nerves.

As usual, Viktor can discern the score before Yuuri’s myopic straining can.

“Yuuri! 116.2!” He whoops, shooting to his feet. “You’re in first!”  

Yuuri nods once, sharply, pleased smile playing around his lips, quiet in his excitement as Viktor is loud in his. 

Viktor wraps his arms around Yuuri and kisses him, awkward so that their teeth accidently clash. Yuuri laughs and rubs his front teeth with his finger when they pull apart.

“God, you’re so bad at that!” Yuuri says.

“Show me how to do it properly?” Viktor says, and bats his eyelashes.

“I won’t make out with you in the kiss-and-cry, Viktor,” Yuuri says, imperious.

“Can we shout our good wishes at Seung-gil to see if he turns blue?” Viktor hisses.

“Mean,” Yuuri says.

 

They make their way back to their seats by the time Yurio takes the ice.

Otabek is sitting in the seat Yurio had vacated, Yurio’s jacket bundled up on his lap.

“Hello,” he says, with the same polite but flat expression he’s been greeting them with for the past four years. As someone who considers their trademark to be dramatics and theatrics (“Unfortunately, that’s one perception of yourself that’s correct,” according to Yuuri), Viktor was unaware that it was even possible to keep one’s facial muscles so still, but Otabek somehow manages to.

“Hello, Otabek! Your program was lovely!” Yuuri says.

“Hey, Otabek!” Viktor says, slinging a leg into Yuuri’s lap as he twists around in his seat. Yuuri gives two short, pointed coughs, which Viktor ignores. “Planning on coming back up to St. Petersburg for a visit again this summer?”

“I would enjoy that, if you’d have me,” Otabek says.

Viktor always forgot how hard it was to pry words out of him. Yurio’s music begins, and he leaps into his program with ferocity. He over-rotates most of his jumps, but Viktor can’t look away. He’s seen Yurio skate with wanting before: he always has. But this is the first time Viktor’s seen Yurio skate longing.

“Thank you, good to see you two,” Otabek says suddenly, voice rough. He sets Yurio’s jacket carefully on his seat. He doesn’t rush off, but his jaw is set and his fists are shoved into his pocket.

Yurio strikes his ending pose, hands trembling.

 

“Do you remember our first Grand Prix Final together?” Viktor says that night in the cool dark of their hotel room. “The night before the short program? We pushed our beds together.”

“Sentimental old man,” Yuuri says.

“I fell in the crack between them and almost  _ died. _ ”

“ _ Dramatic _ old man,” Yuuri teases softly, wrapping his arm around Viktor’s waist and pulling him close until there’s no space between them. The hotel’s quiet at this hour: the huff of the air conditioner, the whirr of the minifridge, the soft rhythm of their breath.

Viktor wraps their legs together. He’d always had a soft spot for cute boys. He thinks: I would’ve loved a Yuuri who was bold as he’d been the first night they’d met, I would’ve loved a Yuuri who remained shy and retiring, with a love easy: another night in a club, getting fucked in a bathroom in a city he couldn’t remember, lying awake thinking of things to say to make Yuuri blush.

But.

Viktor had been in France, once. A small town, high in the mountains. The Pyrenees. There’d been a boy, the sort of boy who liked to climb mountains, who had a favorite river.

His favorite river had been a hike up a steep, rock-strewn trail that left Viktor praying he didn’t twist an ankle, because Viktor had always been more graceful on the ice than on the ground. He’d been shivering, the air thin, and the boy’s river had been a shock down Viktor’s back like a fall from a jump.

It had been the cleanest water Viktor had ever seen, but it hadn’t run clear: it ran blue, and it ran still but it was  _ running _ , rushing from snowmelt from the mountain’s peak, frothing nervously into swirls and eddies by the shore, but deep and sure in the center.

Viktor had regained his bearings quickly, because ice skating and press conferences are all about righting one’s self so fast that it appears that one had never been off balance at all and so he had experience; made a crack about the river being loveable because it was the color of his eyes in his French, which was at the time good enough to be useful but broken enough to be endearing. It’s what the boy had wanted to hear, Viktor’s sure, but he couldn’t remember why it’s what he would’ve wanted to hear. He’d left the boy, but he’d kept the river.

“What are you thinking about?” Yuuri says, running his hands over Viktor’s hair. Viktor thinks. Yuuri leaves him silent, trying to piece together his words, when he’d become so used to having the words already pieced together in his head. It’s a thrill.

He can’t figure out how to tell Yuuri that there’s a river somewhere in the mountains that should be named after him. Yuuri waits for him to find the words, breathes slow and warm against his neck.

“I’m very lucky to know you,” Viktor says.

“Viktor,” Yuuri whispers, like an answer, and worms his face against Viktor’s neck, brushing his lips against the side of his collarbone. “I know I’m in first right now,” he says, turning urgent, “but I still feel like I have so much to prove.”

Viktor doesn’t say  _ you don’t have to prove anything  _ or  _ don’t worry _ . “I can’t wait to see you.”

 

They take their time the next morning. Viktor wakes up with his hips stiff, locked up in their sockets. He has been waking up like that for about a year now. He does the stretches that his physical therapist had commanded him to do in the small space between the bed and the TV. He has been doing the stretches he was commanding to since before he could read.

Yuuri pushes him deeper into the stretches when required, and he is strong and gentle, and Viktor complains because when he complains Yuuri will roll his eyes and laugh.

It will be a long day. In addition to the free skate itself, Yuuri will have interviews, autograph requests, TV cameras. He will, invariably, say more to some poor sportscaster than he intended to, and will then experience a spiral of embarrassment and anxiety until distracted. Upon emerging from the distraction, he will realize his spiral was not grounded in reality, and require a granola bar to bring up his blood sugar. Viktor has become very good at supplying granola bars.

It will be a long day, but a good day, no matter what happens, Viktor thinks, and helps Yuuri gel his hair and brush highlighter on his cheekbones and glitter on his eyelids.

When they arrive at the venue, it’s already bustling.

“Where’ve you been, pig?” Yurio says, removing only one earbud.

“I saw on Instagram that you just got here ten minutes ago,” Yuuri says.

“I hate that you actually use Instagram now,” Yurio says.

“Where else would he put all his good Makkachin pictures?” Viktor says.

“Up his ass,” Yurio suggests.

“No,” Yuuri says.

“Yuri! Get over here!” Yakov calls, probably deafening the poor sportscaster standing next to him.

Yurio makes a face, but he goes. His eyes catch uncomfortably for a second on Otabek, who is standing quietly next to his coach while his coach answers an interviewer’s questions. Yurio makes another face, one that is not awful and twisted but small and open. He shakes it away, sharply. “See you, losers,” he mumbles, and obediently joins Yakov.

“Why are you always right about this kind of thing?” Viktor says.

Yuuri gives Viktor a bratty, self-satisfied smile, the one that he knows makes Viktor melt, smoothing down the back of his hair.

“Now I  _ have  _ to kiss you,” Viktor says.

“Oh, no,” Yuuri says. “Imagine my surprise and dismay.”

 

“I can’t believe I talked about your  _ dick, _ ” Yuuri groans, jamming the heels of his hands into his eyes.

Viktor tries not to snicker, and fails. “To be fair, he was the one who brought it up.”

“Only because he thought I did!”

“To be fair, I also thought you were trying to make a joke about my dick, and I laughed,” Viktor says.

“Are we talking about Viktor’s dick?” Chris says, appearing as a tall, spandex-clad apparition with a chest cutout revealing pectoral cleavage in front of their pair of folding chairs. “Because that’s my kind of conversation.”

“Hey, Chris,” Yuuri says, waving his granola bar wrapper Chris’s way.

“We were, but it’s a banned topic now,” Viktor says.

“I see,” Chris says, taking up residence in Yuuri’s lap. “Pretty crazy that this time next year all of us will finally be out.”

“You’re retiring?” Yuuri says, distracted from the protests Viktor knew he’d been planning on making.

Chris shrugs. “I’ll be twenty nine. The same age you were when you retired, Vik.”

It’s not surprising. Chris has been hinting at it all season. Viktor still can’t make the words fit into reality as he knows it.

They sit back and watch Otabek and Yurio curve around each other, the space between them conspicuous. Seung-gil Lee still keeping to himself, withdrawn and vampiric.

“Hey, pervs,” Phichit says, popping up with his phone in front of him. “You’re going to have rumors spreading that you’re cheating on poor Viktor, Yuuri,” Phichit says mournfully.

“Not if you don’t post the picture,” Yuuri says.

“I’ll save it,” Phichit says, “for quiet, private moments, alone.”

Yuuri sticks his tongue out at him in reply.

“Let’s get a selfie of us old guys, eh?” Phichit says.

“Seung-gil is the same age as you,” Chris points out.

“Chris. The guy’s eternally young,” Phichit says. “He’ll be looking like a fresh, youthful, attractive protagonist of a vampire-themed horror movie when we’re all in our graves. Now everyone, smile and look cute!”

 

Viktor’s never seen the rink Yuuri had trained at in Detroit. They’ve been to the States many times as a couple, on vacations, for competitions, for exhibitions, but whenever Viktor had brought up visiting Detroit, Yuuri answered with a simple shrug. Yuuri’s deep-running and inherent lack of sentimentality sometimes surprised Viktor, since Yuuri loved animals deeply to the point of checking before watching adventure movies to see if the dog would die. He'd gotten misty-eyed when Yurio had given him his grandpa’s piroshki recipe unrequested and unprompted. However, when Yuuri had moved to St. Petersberg with all his things in just one suitcase, Viktor had realized that Yuuri just really loved dogs and, apparently though not surprisingly, Yurio.

Viktor hasn’t even been to Detroit, but he can imagine it: he’s been to rotting-out Rust Belt cities before. The people who live in them are invariably friendly, unimpressed with celebrity, with a perpetual chip on their shoulder. It reminds him of his childhood hometown, with the addition of significantly more American rap music skittering out of passing cars.

The anonymity of the American Midwest had never bothered him. Neither had the anonymity of the scattered villages Viktor had driven past as a child. Obscurity was something he had already left behind by the time he could understand the concept.

He had imagined getting lost in the cornfields that stretched to the horizon. He had imagined, as a child, when he was very angry at Lilia, running away to the country. The image of a faded pink farmhouse with a tumbledown barn and chickens bobbing up and down the gravel driveway had become stubbornly stuck in his head: he pictured life there as the only life he knew. He would stretch, and exercise, and eat very sparingly. He would skate, because if he did not skate, he did not know what would happen, because he always skated, because he had a wheel turning in his guts that drove him forward every morning.

The wheel still spun, inertia conserved through years and airplane miles and hotel keycards. Interviewers asked: what drives your skating? Viktor can say, like he did when he was sixteen and looked angelic and was desperate for people to see him as smarter than his broken English made him seem,  _ I’m inspired.  _ Viktor can say, like he did when he was eighteen and still angelic and learning that appearing a little airheaded wasn’t necessarily a bad thing,  _ I do!  _ Viktor can say, like he did when he was twenty-two and longing to be sharp and praying that his hip injury wouldn’t put him out for the Olympics,  _ I guess I just like winning!  _ Viktor can say, like he did when he was twenty-six and suddenly, achingly honest the way people get honest with each other in broken elevators,  _ surprising people.  _ He meant  _ telling stories, being reborn again and again,  _ but he’d never been good with saying the things he needed to say, just good at saying things other people wanted to hear.

After tomorrow, Viktor will be neither a competitor nor a coach. He wonders if he will wake up tomorrow with a burning sense of stillness, or an itch that he can’t scratch.

 

Seung-gil Lee skates a free skate that is as cleanly-done as it is totally emotionless and unsuited to him.

Phichit’s free skate is filled with joy, as all of Phichit’s skates are, and has the highest difficulty level of any he has attempted so far. Yuuri wolf-whistles as Phichit waves to the crowd with one arm and pins a plush hamster to his side with the other.

“He gets better every year!” Yuuri says, settling back in his seat with a grin. Viktor knows that Yuuri’s been struck by thoughts about the oddity of never competing against Phichit again, would’ve known even if Yuuri had not confided them to him.

Viktor understands the strangeness of the feeling. Despite the fact that Viktor retired last year, he still can’t quite believe that he’ll never compete against Chris again. Chris’ impending retirement only makes Viktor feel more imbedded in a surreal alternate timeline: he and Chris narrowly dodged arrest and a committed romantic relationship for a little over nine years. The song Chris is skating to is unmistakably a love song. Viktor had forgotten that there’s a ring on Chris’s finger too. Chris’s jumps are solid, but he looks almost fawnlike through his step sequences. Viktor wonders if that is how he looked last GPF, someone truly skating love, overwhelming and new, for the first time.

Otabek takes the ice next. Yurio is nowhere to be seen. He performs as he did yesterday; technically correct, with more emotion than Viktor has ever seen from him, but Viktor can’t quite put his finger on what emotion he is trying to express.

“Davai,” he says as he passes Yurio at the entrance to the rink. His face is impassive, his shoulders squared. He reaches out as if to offer Yurio his hand in order to help him into the rink, but seems to think better of it, drawing his hand back to his side.

Yurio whips his head around, stares with his lips slightly parted. Yurio’s always had an expressive face: Viktor can visibly see him flip through emotions before settling, as usual, on a scowl. “Um. Thanks,” Yurio says. His words come out far more softly than the wicked wrinkle of his nose suggested they would. A tiny smile takes up residence in one corner of Otabek’s mouth.

“Is this not the most agonizing thing you’ve ever seen?” Viktor hisses to Yuuri.

Yakov talks to Yurio over the boards, Yurio nodding along, more solemn then he used to be.

“Go, Yurio!” Yuuri cheers as Yurio parts from Yakov and skates towards the center of the ring.

“Ganba!” Viktor calls. “Knock ‘em dead!” and Yuuri bends double laughing at him.

Yurio’s eyes flutter closed until his music begins. He raises his head then, flicks his hair from his face. The girlish gesture looks sweet on his new broad-shouldered frame. As he skates, he leaves his heart behind, furling his guts out in his wake, red and pink and bruise-blue.

He doesn’t land a single jump clean, but he opens his chest like a robot revealing wires, microchips, his pulsing insides. Loneliness, and long days, and love.

Viktor stands arm and arm with Yuuri, frozen in place until the performance is over. He can feel Yuuri stilled besides him. They’re both holding their breath.

Yurio crumples when his music fades away, sinking to the ice with his legs in all the awkward bony angles that Viktor vividly associates with him.

He gets to his feet gracefully, waves to the people who clap and cheer his name, stumbles off the ice with eyes glassy-brilliant to the kiss-and-cry, clasping Yuuri’s hand in his on his way.

They watch him go, and now it is Yuuri’s turn. Viktor helps him onto the ice, and Yuuri’s nervous energy has become a compact focused point of light, his eyes burning into Viktor’s across the boards. The air smells cold and fresh and empty, like a blank page. Viktor remembers the smell like he remembers the smell of his home when he was a kid, like he remembers the smell of Yuuri’s hair.

“Remember what I said the other night?” Yuuri says, hands clasped over Viktor’s.

Viktor’s heart is heavy with all the things he remembers Yuuri saying, and it’s good, it holds him down as his heart pounds now, too fast like a frightened bird’s. “Hmm,” he says, tilts his head to the side, teasing. “Something about me being very, very good. Too dirty for mixed company, really.”

Yuuri laughs in a bright flash. “Oh, stop, you!” he says, and settles his arms on Viktor’s shoulders, unbearably tender.

“I love you,” Viktor says, the words burning their way out of his throat so that he feels like a fire-swallower.

“Viktor,” Yuuri breathes. “Let me show you.”

 

Viktor’s mother read to him about the deaths of the saints. Viktor was young, but he knew pain: bruised feet, bleeding toenails, the crack of his skull on the ice. The saints flew the heaven with wings like crowns, floated into heaven on a golden river, glowed like the center of the earth.

Yuuri’s free skate costume is the mist that rolls in over the sea when the seasons are changing. White as the robes of the elect, a circlet of silver woven into his hair, hairpins digging into his scalp, probably.

Yuuri takes the light, scatters it like a prism, throws it against the walls with every gesture that flows from his center out towards his fingertip like ripples on a pond.

There’s no story besides the story of a lot of late nights in hotels, watching a lot of dawns together driving to the rink in the morning, two people dancing together on the soft wet sand of a beach. Viktor suddenly aches all up and down his spine, wishing they were alone at the Ice Castle, Yuuri skating his routine again for Viktor, and Viktor alone.

Viktor’s mother had read to him the deaths of the saints. It had taught him that death was supposed to hurt. Yurio had said,  _ Viktor Nikiforov is dead.  _ He hadn’t been, then. Not yet.

 

Yuuri strikes his final pose, his cheeks wet. Viktor’s are, too, though he doesn't realize until the music stops. Yuuri waves and bows, and when he reaches the boards Viktor leans over and kisses him, tasting salt.

“I think,” Yuuri says, “I think, I think, Viktor, that you have to marry me now.”

“We have the salt,” Viktor says, offering his hands to Yuuri. “All we need is the bread.”

Yuuri’s white gloves are wet with tears when he takes Viktor’s offering and leans on him to hop off the ice. “Let’s go put the kiss in kiss-and-cry?” He says, half-joking.

“Don’t we always?” Viktor says.

 

They both cry again during the medal ceremony. Yuuri’s gold medal glints on his chest, and he claps a hand over his mouth as he holds it up, eyes wide and bright. Yurio whispers to Yuuri, holding his own silver medal tenderly, and Yuuri responds by pulling him up to the first place podium, a mirror image of last year’s medal ceremony. Otabek peers over from where he stands with his bronze, seeking Yurio’s eyes.

Yuuri offers his hand to Otabek, looking so swannish and sweet that Viktor aches. Last year, Viktor had stood where Otabek stands now, and as Viktor had last year, Otabek winds up standing squashed onto the first place podium with Yuuri and Yurio.

It might be the first time Otabek has ever cracked a smile on the podium: when Yurio looks over Yuuri into Otabek’s eyes.

 

They’re getting ready for the banquet when someone knocks on their hotel room door.

“Who’s that?” Yuuri calls from the bathroom as Viktor peers out the peephole.

“Yurio?” Viktor says, opening the door. Yurio’s got a large cloth grocery bag slung over his shoulder and a surly expression, and he storms past Viktor without so much as a “hello.” It’s business as usual for Yurio, so Viktor isn’t surprised.

“Where’s Katsudon?” He demands, plunking the bag down on their bed.

“Um, here?” Yuuri says, peering around the bathroom doorframe. “What’s going on, Yurio? Don’t you have to get ready for the banquet? I’m sure Yakov and Lilia will be looking for you—”

“I want you to shave my head,” Yurio blurts flatly.

“What?” Viktor says.

“I mean—” Yuuri says, flailing.

“ _ Please, _ ” Yurio says.

Yuuri sighs. “Viktor, could you grab me my pajama pants? I don’t want to get hair on my suit.”

“Wait, you’re going to do it?” Viktor says.

“ _ Viktor! _ ”

“Sure,” Viktor says.

Yuuri turns out to be surprisingly comfortable with the whole thing. Yurio pulls out the clippers from the bag, and Yuuri fiddles with them more out of nervousness than lack of experience. “I cut my dad’s hair all through high school. You know how cheap he is, he hated wasting money on haircuts,” Yuuri says, sitting Yurio down on the edge of the bathtub with a towel wrapped around his shoulders.

Viktor remembers when he had gotten his own hair cut short, how the beautician had asked him again and again if he was sure. The memory keeps him from asking Yurio why he wants his head shaved.

Yurio screws his eyes shut at the first touch of the clippers to his scalp. Yuuri is gentle and quick. Yurio’s head is marked with a sharp, crumpled scar over his ear, the roots of his hair prickling faint and golden. Viktor’s seized, again, by the urge to hug him. He looks very small, slouched over in their hotel bathroom.

“I’m done, Yurio,” Yuuri says, turning off and unplugging the clippers. Yurio unwinds the towel from around his shoulders and hastily dumps it in the bathtub, scrambling to look at his reflection in his mirror. His eyes look big in his sharp face. “It was just—fucking  _ annoying, _ ” he announces. “I didn’t like it getting in my eyes.” Viktor has seen Yurio carefully combing his bangs over his eyes enough times that he has to suppress a snort at that.

He tilts his head this way and that, studying his own vulnerabilities.  “Thanks, Katsudon.”

“It was no problem,” Yuuri shrugs, handing the clippers back to Yurio.

Yurio scowls in his reflection before looking away.

 

“Yuuri, I really do think he’ll be alright,” Viktor says, collapsing on the bed in his suit and tie after Yurio leaves.

“I’m sure he will be,” Yuuri says, putting on his tie and quirking an eyebrow at Viktor, who is usually obsessive about not wrinkling his clothes.

“I’m very tired,” Viktor says by way of explanation. Yuuri finishes knotting his tie with a flourish and comes round the bed, settling himself on top of Viktor.

“Should we stay in for the night?” Yuuri says, hands encircling Viktor’s biceps. His smirk could bring men to their knees (it has certainly brought Viktor his knees, many times).

“I think I’d never be forgiven for stealing you away on such a triumphant occasion,” Viktor says, tilting his chin up to beg for a kiss.

Yuuri grants him one, and another, and another, because he is kind and generous and angelic.

“Wow,” Viktor says when they pull apart to breath. “I really do love my beautiful fiancé.”

“Flatterer,” Yuuri says, getting up to fix his tie.

 

Yakov accosts them not long after they arrive at the banquet (just a  _ little _ late).

“Viktor, look at him! What possessed him to do this? He looks like a skinhead!”

Crammed into a suit, tie, and loafers, Yurio doesn’t exactly look like a skinhead. Still, the sharp sleekness of his newly shaved head mirrors his hunched posture to give him the look of a brooding teenager, an image Yakov had been trying to make Yurio shed ever since he’d become a brooding teenager.

“I won’t say anything to Otabek, but I’m sure Yurio got him to do it. Yurio’s got that boy wrapped around his finger, and nothing good ever comes of that,” Yakov looks mournfully at Viktor and Yuuri, standing arm and arm. “Well. Usually,” he amends. “Good skate, Katsuki.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri says, demure as usual in the face of Yakov’s gruffness. He hesitates, as if debating with himself, and Viktor thinks,  _ Yuuri— _

“Yakov,” Yuuri pipes up. “I apologize, but—“

_ Here he goes… _ Viktor thinks.

“I was the one who shaved Yurio’s head for him,” Yuuri confesses.

“What?” Yakov says.

“He seemed…unsettled. I was worried he would try to do it himself and end up nicked up,” Yuuri says. “I truly am sorry, I should’ve tried to talk him out of it—“

“Yakov? What are you doing?” Lilia demands, appearing at Yakov’s elbow. “Are you still interrogating people about Yurio’s hair? He’s grown far too old and tall to attempt to appear like a child. I’m surprised he didn’t try to cut it himself earlier. Now here you are, worrying about his hair, when what you should be worrying about is his  _ mouth.  _ He’s talking to sponsors, go over and make sure he doesn’t swear.”

Yakov goes quietly, as commanded, but Lilia stays. She looks them up and down, gaze penetrating and sharp. Viktor had imagined as a child that her vision had been like an x-ray, cutting all the way to the bone. “I suppose Yurio will have to find some other way to motivate himself, now that you’re retiring,” she says to Yuuri.

Yuuri nods. “It was always a joy to compete against him,” he says.

“I believe Yuri feels likewise,” Lilia says. She is silent for a minute, staring Yuuri down. “I have always enjoyed watching dancers skate,” she says finally. “Far more than I enjoy watching skaters try to dance.”

“Ouch,” Viktor says. Lilia gives him a look of absolute pity.

Yuuri stammers out the beginnings to several different sentences before Lilia, in an absolutely rare and transcendental moment of kindness, says, “I enjoyed your free skate, Yuuri, and wish you the best in your retirement.”

“Ah! Thank you, thank you, Ms. Baranovskaya,” Yuuri says, effusive in his relief.

“We don’t have to invite her to our wedding, do we?” Viktor says as Lilia makes her way back to Yurio’s side.

“She  _ did  _ compliment me,” Yuuri says.

“Compelling,” Viktor says. “How drunk are you planning to get?”

“Absolutely not,” Yuuri says.

 

“Absolutely not” translates to “slightly,” apparently. Yuuri has some champagne and dances with Viktor. He makes his rounds, chatting with sponsors and ISU officials and coaches. Viktor is very pleased to be on his arm, watching as he accepts compliments with decreasing fluster. Yuuri has a little more champagne, and he whirls Viktor onto the dance floor again. He has a little more champagne and dances with Phichit. He returns flushed and giggly to their table where Viktor is sitting.

“I think I’d better quit while I’m ahead,” he says.

“Depends on what kind of party you want this to be,” Viktor says. 

“Look! Yurio and Otabek are talking!” Phichit says, collapsing into a chair next to Yuuri.

“Just a little more, maybe,” Yuuri sighs. “And I was just about to ask Yurio to dance!”

“You would’ve lost a kneecap,” Viktor says. “Maybe it’s good that he’s been distracted by romance.”

“Please! He danced with me last year!” Yuuri says, going off with his hips swaying to snag a final flute of champagne.

“Talk about being distracted by romance,” Phichit groans. “Look at you and Yuuri, look at Chris and his man! You’re all so cute. I need a boy and I need a boy now!”

“You never know. Maybe Seung-gil will pull a Yuuri and get off his face,” Viktor says.

“And hump you?” Phichit says with interest.

“And hump  _ you _ , hopefully,” Viktor says. “You may have not noticed, but I’m  _ engaged. _ ”

“Are you flashing your ring at Phichit because he’s hitting on you?” Yuuri says, taking his seat again and draping his legs across Viktor’s lap.

“Du-ude,” Phichit drawls in the mocking approximation of an American accent they bounce between them.

“Du-ude,” Yuuri drawls back, and they burst into laughs.

“I will be flashing my ring for no reason until I accidently knock it off my finger and down the drain,” Viktor says.

“Presumably we’ll fish it out and you’ll be able to keep flashing it around,” Yuuri says. “It was expensive.”

“Thrifty,” Viktor says, thoughtfully wrapping his hands around Yuuri’s knees.

“Now stop being couply and help me!” Phichit says. “Yuuri, what do you think of Seung-gil? Doesn’t he have very nice eyebrows?”

“Not as nice as Viktor’s,” Yuuri says.

“You’re useless,” Phichit says. “Look! Otabek is smiling!”

“Wow, wow, wow,” Viktor chants.

Yuuri lets out a little gasp. “Look at them!” 

Otabek is running his hands over Yurio’s head, and he really is smiling. Viktor had seen a few of Otabek’s smiles when he’d stayed in St. Petersberg over the summer: all of them small and private, most of them directed towards Yurio. This smile glows in the middle of the noisy banquet room, but it is still unmistakably for Yurio and Yurio only.

And most astonishing of all: Yurio does not bat Otabek’s hand away or stiffen to his touch. No, he lays his hand in the crook of Otabek’s arm and  _ smiles back. _

“I can’t believe this,” Phichit says. “Are they going to dance together?”

“Oh my god,” Viktor says. “They’re leaving!”

“Nothing like making out in the bathroom during a banquet,” Phichit says.

“Why, yes, Phichit, I’d love to!” Chris says, sneaking up behind Phichit, fiancé in tow.

Phichit jumps. “Chris! You scared me!”

“He only has eyes for Seung-gil,” Viktor says.

“Which one’s that?” Ben, Chris’s fiancé, says, scanning the crowd.

“The one that looks like a vampire,” Phichit says. “Don’t all stare at once!”

Sueng-gil is standing next his coach, fidgeting very subtly with the hem of his suit jacket. Something about him must remind Yuuri of his own dark banquet past, because he turns to face Phichit and says, “You should really go talk to him.”

“I don’t want to die, Yuuri,” Phichit says.

“I could be wrong, but I think he might like it if someone asked him to dance,” Yuuri says.

“You know what?” Phichit says, standing up. “I think I will. After all, we’ll have to hold up against the youths after all you old men retire.” He goes off, fishing his phone out of his pocket and smoothing down his hair.

“I should be offended,” Chris says. “But he’s so damn cute.”

“I’ve been getting it for years,” Viktor says.

“Aw, poor Viktor,” Chris says. “I’m rubbing salt in your wounds and dancing with your fiancé, by the way.”

“It sounds like neither of us have much of a choice about the matter,” Yuuri says.

“Nope! But Viktor can dance with Ben if he’d like!” Chris says cheerfully.

“I think I’m just going to make Viktor remind me just who everyone is again,” Ben says.

“Fine, I'll dance, just let me see if Phichit is successful,” Yuuri says.

“I don’t want to be premature,” Ben says. “But if you’re talking about the little loud one and the little quiet one, I think the boy’s into it.”

“He’s not smiling,” Viktor says.

“Some people have a sense of subtlety,” Chris says.

“Not you!”

“I didn’t say that!”

Seung-gil is looking at Phichit’s outstretched hand like it’s a snake, in Viktor’s opinion, but he eventually takes it.

“That boy could charm a rock,” Chris says. “C’mon, sweet golden Yuuri! I promise to return you to Viktor unharmed! God knows he can’t find anyone else to tie him up and let him be the bottom bitch he’s always dreamed of being.”

Yuuri’s eyebrows are in his hairline and his jaw is  _ dropped. _

Viktor shrugs. “You’re the one who agreed to dance,” he says.

“Chris, you can have him. Ben’s the only one here that I like,” Yuuri says, swinging his legs out of Viktor’s lap and giving him a parting kiss on the cheek.

He’s giddily light on his feet as Chris whirls him onto the dancefloor. Viktor just really likes to watch him. 

“I love being engaged,” Viktor says, leaning his chin on the heel of his hand.

“Me too,” Ben says quietly, and they look at each other for a second before grinning. Ben is very nice and does something in business and has a broad Scottish accent and a surprisingly surreal sense of humor and doesn’t know a thing about ice skating. He’s not the man that Viktor would’ve pictured Chris ending up with, but that’s probably a good thing.

Chris and Yuuri’s dance is a little less erotic than some of their past banquet dances have been, but they’re still eye-catching together, Yuuri leading with a bossy fussiness that’s adorable and Chris following, playing up the drama. Phichit and Seung-gil are an odd couple, Phichit’s bouncy steps following by Seung-gil’s measured ones, but Seung-gil looks more relaxed than Viktor’s ever seen him, and Phichit doesn’t look like he’s having a bad time either.

Yurio and Otabek appear, presumably from a shadowy and romantic corner, both looking significantly more mussed than they had when they left.

“Okay, what’s the short quiet guy’s name?” Ben says.

“The one dancing with Phichit?” Viktor says.

“No, the other one, with the one with the shaved head?”

“Oh, that’s Otabek! And then Yurio’s the one with the shaved head.”

“Yurio?” Ben says.

“So we don’t have two Yuuri’s!” Viktor says.

Ben narrows his eyes, squinting confusedly at the dance floor. “His hair wasn’t like that yesterday.”

“No,” Viktor says. “Yuuri shaved his head before the banquet.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand,” Ben says, “the  _ nuances  _ of ice skaters.”

“Probably not,” Viktor says.

 

“I miss,” Viktor says when he awakens next to Yuuri the following morning, “Makkachin, my absolutely perfect boy.”

“Me too,” Yuuri says though a yawn, wriggling around until he is lying on his back, his bare shoulder against Viktor’s bare shoulder.

“Hey, Yuuri,” Viktor singsongs, rolling over into him.

“Yes, love?” Yuuri says, turning his head on the pillow to meet Viktor’s eyes.

“I think I miss our bed,” Viktor says. “It’s bigger.”

“Me too,” Yuuri says.

Viktor’s head is still busy, but he’d known it would be. His muscles ache to work. There’s still lots of stories locked inside them.

“I’m excited for the future,” Yuuri says. “For our future.”

“Me too,” Viktor says.

 

Viktor doesn’t have a favorite river, but he does have a husband who is the most beautiful person he’s ever met, and a old dog with creaky joints, and creaky joints, himself, and a favorite ocean.

His favorite ocean looks a lot like oceans everywhere do: steel grey in the winter, vibrant with algae and seaweed in the summer. The wind that rolls off it leaves Viktor’s hair textured with salt and smelling sharp and damp. Viktor keeps an eye on the tides, now, to know the best times to find the shells left behind when the water recedes. He finds jellyfish and sea cucumbers and devil’s purses, too, in hollows in the sand surrounded by v’s of foam. He learns about the different kinds of birds he sees: gulls, plovers, herons. 

A wheel often spins in his chest while he walks, and drives him to a jog. He can only jog for a bit, since Makkachin tires quickly now. Viktor imagines the itch in his muscles flowing down his legs and through his toes into a canal in the sand and then spilling out into the ocean. He’s always been ambitious. He needs to figure out where to put that ambition, now. 

He boxes it up in his chest, he runs it out, he stretches it out, he listens to the loud punk music that Yurio listens to and turns it up until it shreds into his ears. Sometimes he gets anxious, pacing around the house the way Yuuri does when he’s searching for his glasses.

If Yuuri notices, he will tell Viktor something to clean or ask him to go pick something up from the store, and sometimes he will pull Viktor very close and guide him to the couch, where they will nap until the light starts to stream golden and late-afternoon through the screens. 

Sometimes they will lay there and let the light be golden on them, and Viktor will whisper the stories that build up in his head with Yuuri’s hands clasped warm over his stomach. 

Sometimes Yuuri will spring up with a yelp as he always used to, peering at the clock and sliding to his feet and they will make dinner, or help out at Yu-topia, or teach kids at Ice Castle until dark.

Sometimes they even walk on the beach at night: Makkachin staying close by their sides. The water glowing with the moon, who pulls the waves back or pushes them forward. He and Yuuri hold hands, sticky with sand and salt. Viktor’s not a kid anymore, but he sometimes feels like one with Yuuri.They chase each other up and down the beach, the sand cold from the dark underfoot, and they laugh loud, the wind whipping Yuuri’s hair over his face.  Viktor sees himself shaped anew in his shadow cast by the streetlamps as they walk home on the sidewalk over the bridge. 

“Try writing the things about yourself that seem like they will always be true, maybe?” Yuuri says, and shrugs. “I don’t know a lot. I’ve never done this before, either.”

Viktor has a pretty good idea of what might be on that list. Loving Yuuri is definitely one of the first items. “We’ll figure it out together,” Viktor says.

“Of course,” Yuuri says.

Viktor thinks he will always like to tell stories. He thinks he will always like to read books. He thinks he will always like to take his dog for walks. He thinks he will always like to lace his husband’s skates and kneel at his feet. It’s a start.

He wakes up with his sheets smelling like saltwater and his husband underneath his arm. 

Viktor’s seen a lot of oceans. He’s glad he has a favorite, now. 

**Author's Note:**

> ALSO i dont have anything against seen-better-days rust belt cities because i live in one!! its affectionate ribbing!!


End file.
